


A Flock of Parasols

by orphan_account



Category: K-pop, Pentagon (Korea Band)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - High School, Ambiguous Relationships, Flashbacks, Fluff, Getting Back Together, Getting Together, M/M, Miscommunication, Misunderstandings, Reunions, Slow Burn, the working title for this was 'fakedeep'
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-07
Packaged: 2018-12-12 07:47:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11732679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Yanan, as a jaded, 30 year old best-selling author who hasn't had coffee, a repetitive finger strain flare up, a full hard drive, or the tiniest speck of inspiration in over two years.Kang Hyunggu, as the man that changes all of this.





	A Flock of Parasols

The new coach buses are stark white.

You can clearly make out the shape of the curved edges, long white panels with photos of pretty actresses telling you their tea is the elixir of youth, and even the stairs at the entrance have rows of twinkling yellow lights guiding you up them, like little beams of sunlight. Five year old Yanan would never have gotten lost in a bus courtyard with these stark white buses, clutching his mother’s leg out of fear to only become blinded by the draping of her dark coat and black scarf, and end up tripping and being left behind. The old ones may have been white to begin with, but through the grit and grime of unpaved roads and the gradual erosion from wind and pebbles, they took on a dark taupe shade. There isn’t a snobby, unshaved bus driver collecting his ticket as he walks up the steps either, one who will ruffle his hair and ask what grade he’s in and compliment his eyes only to turn his nose up and hmph when Yanan’s Chinese accented Korean pours out instead of the proper vowels, slick with Southern dialect.

 **_From: Changgu_ **  
_I’m sorry for yelling at you_  
_but I mean you’re an author_  
_aren’t you supposed to write_  
_things?_

 **_From: Changgu_ **  
_I’m sorry that was passive_  
_aggressive :(_

Some things stay the same though, like the single parent family of three trying to head all the way up to Seoul with all their worldly possessions packed into shopping bags and taking up a good three seats. There are a few university students too, taking advantage of the Spring Break to search for some fresh air and a new sense of self, and the civil servant who keeps his backpack on the seat next to him while glaring like he will move you up a tax bracket if you ask him to move it. The stench of dried urine if you pick a seat past isle 16, the way the air conditioners are so strong it feels like an actual torrent of ice water is raining down on you, and the inevitable screech of tires when the driver starts their right turn too late.

These are all things a native would say, Yanan thinks, realising it’s been ten years since he has been even in the same country. Of all the places his crazy old man had dragged them too though, struck by whims disguised as artistic enlightenment, they had stayed in Busan for just shy of three years, making this the closest place he has to a home. Any semblance of home is gone though, as the drive starts and Yanan realises it isn’t just the buses that have changed, but the roads they drive on and the homes they drive by as well.

Gone are the fields of Chinese barley and mixed grain wild rice, replaced with high rises, neighbourhoods, and textile factories, though on occasion Yanan can spot a windmill in the far distance. He doesn’t have any distinct memories of what the trip looked like before, partially because his psychiatrist says that depression leads to emotional suppression which leads to memory suppression, and partially because he spent all the trips when he was younger asleep, head buried in a sweater. Now that he’s alone he’s too high strung to let his guard down, with no one else here to look after his wallet or keys, but since the farms of old have been replaced the light pollution helps in keeping Yanan awake.

 **_From: Changgu_ **  
_You should stop walking out_  
_in the middle of meetings_  
_though; how old are you really?_

This is Yanan’s fifth Jinhae Cherry Blossom Festival.

The first time he’d been too young to remember the cherry blossoms, the bridges, or anything besides the dazed look in his father’s eyes as he’d been wheeled around the roads, atop a thin sheet of pink and white petals.

The second time he’d been crabby, having gotten abandoned in the bus courtyard only to find out that his father had left without them and only his mom was going to pick them up. She had reluctantly had their tickets transferred to a different time slot, and they’d arrived two hours after the old man, but Yanan remembers his mother’s bitterness more than anything else.

The third time, and fourth too, had been with… friends. With his family Yanan had only seen the tail end of the festivities, arriving the day after the event’s technical end, but a certain… underclassmen had dragged him to experience the trees in their full bloom and Yanan can recall explicitly the taste of burnt sugar floss melting on his tongue and becoming tacky as it melted onto his sweaty cheeks, the smell of sweat and floral fragrance and wet dew in the brisk morning air, chorus of both piercing and coarse laughter as the caricature artist reveals his painting of the four of them for the first time, and the brush of polyester and fake silk and cotton against his sleeves as he raced through the hoards of onlookers to make it back to the bus on time.

This fifth trip is a return to his roots, because he gets off the bus at eight in the evening and there’s only a few straggling couples left of the road with arms intertwined like cringing octopus tentacles. The festival ended yesterday, but the trees never get the memo and there are still blossoms hanging atop branches, petals drifting down with the breeze.

“This is when the real festival starts.” The bastard would say, gaze so eerily dreamy that Yanan wouldn’t be able to tease. “During the day, during the week, the trees are so busy trying to be pretty for the people, for the cameras, for the sun. At night, when everything is over, when all the people with cameras have gone away, is when they can relax. This is when they can be themselves.”

What a load of bullshit.

“All of these trees, all of these branches, these petals, all of them were born and then died. All authors, all writers, we’re all in the process of living. And for that matter, we’ve only experienced our own lives.” He would continue, walking at an offensively slow pace. “If we want to learn about death, about life, about the end, about other perspectives, we have to learn them from something else. We’ll live until we’re 80, 90, and by then we’ll be too senile to write. These blossoms die at their peak, in full bloom, and have so much left to share.”

Bat shit crazy.

 **_From: Changgu_ **  
_Can you at least confirm_  
_that you’re alive? I’m using_  
_my key if you don’t respond_  
_in 48 hours._

_**From: Changgu**  
That's 2 days I know you're_   
_bad at math._

“Think about all the human years of life, of experience, of stories these flowers have.” His father would always finish this lecture at a small man-made pond near the 60th street intersection, a small pool of watery meant to attract tourists with its reflective surface and appeal to their parched throats. “This tiny pool in itself could give you 3000 years of inspiration.”

Then they would walk into Crown Bakery, the ones that had built the pool, even though most people flocked towards the Paris Baguette right across the street, but the old man’s jaded hipster ways were a priority to how much Yanan yearned for a simple custard hot dog roll. The pastries at the end were the only reason Yanan really agreed to come on these trips, as his mother had been too health conscious to allow him any processed sugars before she left, but his bitterness is probably just a testament to his current desperation.

Making it to the top of the Best Seller’s List early on was supposed to make his life easier.

Out of youthful sentimentality and late nights spent wide awake, worrying about whether anyone would ever actually love him, Yanan had written the first draft for “A Flock of Parasols” in more or less a month flat. He had stayed up nights on end, fingers clattering messily on his keyboard by the end of the month. The bastard hadn’t noticed Yanan’s shitty attendance record until five weeks in, and when he opened the door to make sure his son was still alive Yanan had simply thrown a manuscript at him and promptly burst into tears.

The old man, the editor that won’t stop texting him, his manager, most reviewers, and all the interviewers he meets see the life ahead of him as a minefield of potential. He has so much left to grow, so much road left to walk, so much life left to lead. But burnt out at thirty, Yanan doesn’t know how much more he has to give. He’s released three full length books at this point, and they’ve all done well enough, but he’s been promoting the third for the last 20 months in an effort to cover up the fact he doesn’t have even ten thousand characters of anything else in the works. He hasn’t needed coffee in over a year, his laptop battery hasn’t overheated in the last two years, the last time he went to a library the lady at the front desk hadn’t recognised him, and it’s been so long since he’s written an actual manuscript that the people at the company are starting to tear up every time he brings them a new outline for “something in the works.”

He’s tried shamans, he’s tried praying, he’s tried transcription just to keep the muscle memory in his fingers, and in his last attempt to seek guidance from the universe he had flown to South Korea to try and steal his old man’s inspiration. He walks the entire road twice, even when the night starts to seep through his jacket and make him shiver, partly from the chill and partly from his paranoia about being mugged. There are still enough other people on the road for him to feel safe though, so he continues his trek to greater enlightenment.

The fifth time he passes the Paris Baguette he’s had enough, and steps in for a quick moment, relaxing fully once he feels that his wallet is still in his front pocket. The store is warm, not the stale type of prickling, dry heat associated with a burner, but with a toasty flush-inducing atmosphere that can only be replicated by too many human bodies standing in one space. Of course they don’t have any mustard hot dog rolls, but it’s understandable since it’s late and the pickings are slim. He’s still a bit disgruntled to settle for a strawberry tart instead, adding on a hot chocolate even though he’s warming up at a speed that’ll make him regret that decision in under three minutes.

Eating outside is looking more and more attractive to Yanan after he pays for the food items, crunchy brown bag holding the tart held in his mouth as he cradles the hot chocolate in his elbow and tries to shove some coins into his wallet. There are too many heads wandering around, speaking, too few seats left open, and Yanan isn’t in the mood to be judged for sitting by himself as he tries to squeeze between a family of four and two couples. He’s on his way out the door resolutely, picturing a bench near the beginning of the path and next to the bank that he could sit on, before a clear voice, over the radio static of other voices clashing in the room, calls his name.

“Yanan hyung? Yanan hyung!” Yanan doesn’t catch his name the first time, as he’s nearly forgotten what it sounds like with a Busan accent, but he catches it clearer the second and turns to see someone he hasn’t seen in years.

“Hi.” Yanan greets, mouth forgetting about the pastry, and they both bend down to pick it back up, finger’s brushing. “Hello.” Yanan corrects, not quite sure if it’s been too long for him to speak so informally.

“Are you sure you remember who I am?” The younger teases, lips curling up into a devastating smirk, and Yanan’s gut reaction is “How could I forget?” but he manages to swallow that response down.

It’s been years, and there are crows feet forming near his eyes from his years of bright smiles and loud exclamations, experiences have eroded his hands and made them rougher than the smooth silky digits they used to be, and his hair is a glossy wave of black instead of the drier brunette shades he had experimented with when he was younger, Yanan really couldn’t have forgotten.

Once again, he remembers sweet candy floss, brisk air, loud guffaws, and the passing brush of cheap fabric. He remembers a shiny navy locker number 4634 with three horizontal vents, a chip of silver peeking through on the third one, and a knack of getting stuck when you were late for class. He remembers a specific stage outfit with ripped black denim, two holes on the right leg and three on the left, with black converse and a white crew neck that read Sense in some sans serif font. He remembers the model of said outfit standing in front of stage lights that were so bright their eyelids and noses were lost, leaving them as blank faced ghouls, and he remembers being blinded by not the lights but a certain toothy smile.

“Hyunggu.” Yanan croaks, mouth garbling the syllables he hasn’t made in a while, but they’re distinguished enough to satisfy the man standing across from him. “Kang Hyunggu.” Yanan finishes.

“It’s been a while, Yanan hyung.” Hyunggu grins in response, smirk turning into his full-toothed puppy grin. “I almost didn’t recognise you! What are you doing back in Korea?”

Yanan, belatedly, realises he probably should have told his editor he left the country.


End file.
